


the art of potion brewery

by dreamtowns



Series: insomnia after dark [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Family Drama, Family Feels, Fluff, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, LGBTQ Themes, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 16:15:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21284543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamtowns/pseuds/dreamtowns
Summary: Here are 3 things Noctis knows about Prompto Argentum, his mysterious roommate-best-friend-boyfriend-whatever:1. He had the cutest laugh Noctis had ever heard.2. He had asthma.3. He never talked about his family.There is another fact, tucked in the back of his mind amongst others, one Noctis guards with the vicious fervor of a protective, nesting dragon: he is human.
Relationships: Prompto Argentum/Noctis Lucis Caelum
Series: insomnia after dark [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1532300
Comments: 33
Kudos: 384





	the art of potion brewery

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Final Fantasy XV. All rights reserved to its developers: Square Enix. All that is mine is the plot of this story in particular and any original characters introduced. No copyright infringement intended. No money is being made from this work. This is purely for entertainment purposes.
> 
> TECHNICALLY, this was supposed to be Noctis’ POV during part one, and it ended up being half that, and half like. not lol. It's a little short, ngl, but nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it!

Exam season crawls forth, and Noctis’ maybe-boyfriend hoards apple-flavored jolly ranchers like they’ve been forbidden by the landlord. Noctis stares, amused, at the pile he discovers in one of their shared drawers, stuffed at the back where few shuffle through. 

“Have you discovered something amusing? 

Having sensed Ignis’ presence already, Noctis doesn’t startle when he speaks. As he picks out the crumpled wrappers from the pile, he explains, “It’s exam season at Insomnia Uni—Prom’s stressed and stockpiling jolly ranchers.”

A slightly wrinkled nose, Ignis says, “I believe the entire complex is well-aware of Prompto’s stress levels.”

Noctis doesn’t bother hiding his snort. As midterms reared their heads, Prompto walked around with the distinct scent of lemon cough drops. It either lessened or strengthened, depending on the level of his stress and everyone he interacted with—well, everyone _supernatural _that he unknowingly interacted with—was on the verge of hosting an intervention.

As if summoned, the front door opens and the wards hum in greeting. Prompto trudges forth in a slow gait, bookbag falling on the couch in a dismayed heap. Silently, some of the charms and spells Noctis placed near the front of the apartment brush over Prompto’s skin, searching for hidden injuries, for dried blood, for anything that would let Noctis know that something was _wrong_, that something tried to hurt Prompto while he was away from the safety of their home.

Perhaps it’s a little invasive, the number of protection charms and spells Noctis casts on Prompto on the regular, but after the third kidnapping attempt, after all the break-ins and the fear (and guilt, because what kind of witch-king is he if he can’t even keep one person safe?) that still trails after Noctis’ feet, he’d rather take the brunt of Prompto’s rage than drown in the grief of his death.

Noctis closes the door and makes his way toward the living room. “Welcome home, baby,” he calls, chuckling softly at Prompto’s responding groan. “Had a good day in class?”

“Ugh,” Prompto groans and opens one bleary eye, curled up on the couch. His knitted blanket wrapped tight around his shoulders. “It went – fine, I guess? Dunno, I think someone’s following me?”

Noctis tenses.

In the bedroom, Ignis tilts his head.

“What happened?” Noctis questions, kneeling beside the couch, lightly playing with Prompto’s fingers to make him feel at ease. Internally, though, his blood bubbles and something in him, a darker part he rarely exposed to Prompto’s view, frothed at the mouth of someone _daring _to hurt Prompto. “Did they do anything? Are you injured or—?”

“Hey. Chill out.” Prompto cuts him off with an amused, though slightly exhausted and stressed, smile. “It’s alright. I just noticed someone following me back from campus, but they didn’t seem dangerous?”

Noctis frowns. “Prompto. Baby. They’re _stalking you.”_

“They just didn’t have that kind of vibe,” Prompto says, sagely.

Ignis coughs.

Noctis, vaguely, feels homicidal.

At the noise, Prompto blinks. “Is someone else here?”

“Just Iggy,” Noctis says, waving an absentminded hand toward the bedroom, and then channels his focus on the real problem. “Just because they – they ‘don’t have that vibe’ or whatever doesn’t mean they aren’t _dangerous_, Prom.”

A slight pout forms on Prompto’s lips at that, but Noctis is studiously _not _going to get distracted—or kiss it away. Nope. Not him.

(Noctis is kidding absolutely no one except himself. Prompto does the pouting thing _on purpose_, and he _knows _how Noctis reacts to it, every single time.

Of course, he’s going to kiss it away.

It’d be sacrilegious if he didn’t.)

Twenty minutes after the impromptu makeout session on the couch (sorry, Ignis), Noctis pauses in front of his cauldron (he’s thinking of mixing together an invisibility potion—not one that makes someone actually invisible, but makes them . . . unnoticeable, for lack of a better term, to those who mean them harm) and narrows his eyes.

Half a second later, he whips around toward the living room. “Prompto,” he half-growls. “Stop doing that—we’re still talking about the stalker issue!”

Still perched on the couch, Prompto only laughs.

* * *

They never did resolve the stalker issue, but Prompto talked less of being watched and followed after Ignis decided to keep an eye on him on the long walks home.

Noctis hadn’t needed to ask the vampire to do that. Even Ignis, for all that he was reclusive in the face of humanity, was rather fond of one Prompto Argentum.

(Though Noctis _did _have to stop the Amicitia’s from their plans of becoming actual shields for Prompto, in their wolf forms; all five-foot-tall, snarling wolves ready to tear apart anyone who looked at Prompto in a wrong way.

When he lamented about the situation over his regular phone call with his father, the man only laughed at his plight and said, “I’m afraid humans just bring out the protective behavior in us, Noctis.”

Noctis snorted. “I think you misspoke _insanity_.”

Even Luna, sweet and kind (though, really, there wasn’t anything _sweet_ and _kind _about the queen of fae) and wholly neutral to most things that weren’t in her realm of influence, asked if there were bodies she needed to burn.)

* * *

The eve of their third year living together (being . . . whatever it is that they were to one another), Noctis reenters his apartment from a long, exhaustive day (a group of dwarves tried to mine beneath a hospital, and Noctis _did not _want to deal with the mini earthquake they would’ve undoubtedly cause, and then he had to mediate a feud between a selkie and their cousin, who happened to be a dryad, out in Duscae) only to find the wards going crazy.

Not crazy in the sense that they were destroyed or damaged (there were little who could get through Noctis’ wards, even on a bad day), but crazy in the sense that _something was wrong with Prompto._

He drops his bag in the entryway and follows where his home directs him. Their bedroom, where he finds both Iris and Prompto.

Now, that isn’t so unusual. What _is _unusual is that Iris is softly trying to coax a partly hysterical Prompto out of the locked bathroom.

“What,” he says after a moment, “is going on?”

Iris looks up at him through teary eyes. “I don’t – I don’t know – I just – I just asked him if he, if he would be, you know, going home—,” once the words slipped out of her mouth, a wheezing noise floats from the bathroom, and Iris winces, almost violently, her eyes flashing a mix of gold and brown. “And he just – he just went in there,” she finishes, weakly.

Noctis purses his lips and then gently leads Iris out of the room. “Make yourself some, uh, tea or something,” he tells her, an implication of _please take a calming potion_.

Iris gets it like he knew she would and nods. “Okay. Um – just tell him I’m, I’m sorry?”

“I will,” Noctis replies. He can’t help but pat her head as she bypasses him. Playfully, though still tinged with upset and uneasiness, she growls at him. “Hey – you did good, Iris. He’s not going to hate you for something like this.”

Iris smiles, a little rueful. “Thanks, Noct.”

He waits until Iris is safely ensconced in the kitchen to approach the bathroom. He knocks, lightly, and says, “Prom? It’s me, Noctis—do you want me to come in?”

Heavy, uneven breaths creep beneath the door. Noctis waits for Prompto to gather his breath, his thoughts, his _words_, and stays where he is. He’ll only move if Prompto wants him to move—and even then, he’d probably only go as far as the bed.

“No,” comes the soft response. “No, just – I’ll be out in, in a minute.”

“You sure? You don’t have to if you don’t feel up for it.”

“I’m sure,” Prompto replies. He sounds a little more cognizant. “Just. Just. Gimme five.”

“Okay,” Noctis says, keeping his voice soft and warm. Keeping the worry out of it. He’d rather not accidentally send Prompto spiraling down into another attack.

He sits on the bed and waits. (He’s good at that, the waiting game). Noise from the kitchen—drawers opening, the kettle whistling, Iris pouring an ungodly amount of sugar into the calming potion-slash-tea—fades into the background as Prompto slowly, quietly, makes his way out of the bathroom. Dark circles line beneath his eyes, and there are distinct tear marks against his flushed cheeks.

Noctis almost makes a noise at the bone-deep exhaustion lining Prompto’s face. He only pats the seat beside him and asks, gently, “Is it okay if you hug you?”

Prompto’s expression spasms, and, for half a second, Noctis fears that his question set off another attack, but Prompto only nods and curls up in his lap a moment later.

Noctis holds him as if he’s the most precious thing in the world.

(To Noctis, Prompto _is_.)

* * *

Here are 3 things Noctis knows about Prompto Argentum, his mysterious roommate-best-friend-boyfriend-whatever:

1.) He had the cutest laugh Noctis had ever heard.

Maybe he’s being biased, but he knows he’s right. When Prompto laughed, it was half-giggle, half-snort. It was so different than the wheezing noise Noctis made. And it wasn’t like Noctis was the only person who called Prompto’s laugh adorable—even Ignis thought Prompto had a cute laugh, “for a human,” in his words.

_Ravus_, the Emperor of Hating Human Land, thought Prompto’s laugh wasn’t “too annoying.”

2.) He had asthma.

But he hadn’t always had the condition.

“It developed later, around when I hit sixteen,” Prompto had explained, though Noctis didn’t pry as to how it happened. There was a blank look in Prompto’s eyes during that conversation, and it only disappeared halfway through a Mario Kart tournament Noctis suggested out of sheer desperation.

(There were a lot of things Prompto just didn’t talk about or had negative memories of. Noctis always wanted to talk about it, wanted to erase those memories with good, positive ones, but he always falls short of asking, always too hesitant of stepping over the line.

The last thing Noctis ever wants is to make Prompto afraid of him.)

3.) He never talked about his family.

Noctis never pushed, not really where it counted. Sometimes, if Prompto were in a good mood, he could be coaxed into throwing a tidbit here and there about his cousins, none of whom lived in Insomnia. Anything about his father or his mother made Prompto shut down, made him burrow under the covers smelling and buzzing with anxiety and a mountain of negative emotions Noctis could only dream of brushing the surface of.

But there were moments where Prompto let something from his childhood drop into conversation; a place he’d gone, something he once did with his cousins, or a dish his mother liked to cook on the weekends. But those were like the sharp burn of oxygen when you’ve been suffocating for hours, fleeting and burning and yet you can’t help but gasp for more despite the pain.

(But there is one constant: Prompto never, not once, talked about his father.

Noctis doesn’t even know the man’s name.)

* * *

The short three days of silence when Prompto returned to his home country made Noctis feel like his throat was being constricted with a hot wire. The two weeks Prompto walks around like some ghost are the hardest days of Noctis’ life.

_Family issues_, Prompto had said.

Noctis doesn’t think a simple “family issue” as Prompto makes it out to be causes someone to behave like _that. _

But he tries not to pry. He respects the boundaries Prompto places, respects the unspoken request to leave it alone, but, really.

He’s never wanted to kill a person so bad in his entire life.

* * *

“Hey, Noct?”

He opens one eye and hums. It’s nearing two in the morning, but Noctis would always be hypervigilant to Prompto’s own awareness. It’s a thing, with Lucis Caelum’s (unfortunately). “Hmm? What’s up, baby?”

Prompto’s spent a lot of time awake, lately, ever since he admitted that he was aware of Noctis’ supernatural ancestry. Of their friends. Noctis tries to think optimistically on that, but fear, more often than naught, clouds his thoughts.

“What . . . what are we?” Prompto’s eyes are wide and bright in the moonlight. Noctis can’t help but be mesmerized at his gaze. “Are we, like, friends with benefits? Boyfriends? Just . . .,” he pauses, swallowing, “. . . roommates?”

Sensing the doubt unfurling in Prompto’s skin, Noctis pulls him closer by the waist and buries his face in the crook of Prompto’s neck. A quiet giggle escapes his mouth at the feeling of Noctis’ breath on his skin.

“Boyfriends,” Noctis says easily, though slightly nervous for Prompto’s response. “Unless you don’t want to be—?”

“I do,” Prompto admits quietly, seemingly melting against Noctis. “I just . . . kinda assumed you didn’t want to be?”

“Huh.” Noctis snorts a little. “I did, too.”

Prompto’s quiet, soft laugh floats in the air. Noctis soaks it in as if he’s hearing it for the first time, keeping it immortalized in his memory.

“We do that a lot, huh?” he says. “Assuming things.”

Noctis hums, the vice grips of slumber clawing at him. “We should do som’thin’ about that.”

“Yeah,” Prompto murmurs, falling into slumber as well. “We should.”

They both sleep through the night.

* * *

Here are three more facts about Prompto Argentum:

  1. If he could, he’d eat apple-flavored jolly ranchers for every meal.
  2. He was obsessed with Chocobos.
  3. He is the kindest human Noctis has ever known.

And Noctis will willingly burn the world down to keep him smiling.

* * *

The peace shatters on a Thursday evening. They’re curled up on the couch, a TV show playing softly for background noise. It’s just them that night, as they witness fall trudge into an early winter in Insomnia. Noctis is just a little glad he doesn’t have to shovel snow from the driveway anymore.

Prompto’s phone chimes with a message. He frowns at it, but Noctis, for a moment, thinks it’s because it interrupted his mobile game—and then, Prompto’s breath hitches.

Noctis sits upright. The wards tense, buzzing lightly at the change in atmosphere. “Baby?” he asks, hesitant, reaching for Prompto’s hand. “What’s wrong? Did something happen at home?”

Prompto swallows audibly. “I . . . I need to take this call.”

Noctis nods. He expects Prompto to leave to the bedroom, like he always does when someone in his family calls him, but he stays where he is; partly sprawled over Noctis. It’s a silent testimony over the strength of the trust Prompto has in him, of the way Prompto is slowly, slowly thawing out his castle of ice.

He stays quiet. He isn’t going to do anything to jeopardize that.

Noctis returns to what he was doing, casting and charming a set of knitted fingerless gloves. Prompto loved wearing those.

“Nea?” Prompto cradles his phone to his ear tightly. “What’s going—?”

He’s cut off. Noctis can vaguely hear the other person speaking, but it’s muffled and quiet. They have a nice voice, he notes.

“Oh.” Prompto blinks, dead-eyed. Noctis tenses at the sight. “I see.”

Nea speaks again; a longer explanation that spans almost two minutes. Prompto’s expression doesn’t change.

“Thanks for telling me,” Prompto says, making Noctis know the conversation’s dwindling down. “Just – I’m not going back home, okay? It’s not happening.”

Nea says something else, and it makes Prompto snort a little. Then, in the background, there’s a sharp, _“IS THAT PROMPTO?”_

His boyfriend (the sound of that word makes Noctis’ stomach flutter) laughs, a teasing greeting of, “If it ain’t my favorite troublemaker.”

_“I’M YOUR ONLY TROUBLEMAKER.”_

Nea squawks something that sounds like _stop screeching in my fucking ear, you brat_, and it sets Prompto into a laughing fit. Noctis smiles fondly at the sight of Prompto’s grin, wide and beaming, across his face. After a few more moments of what looks like a less stressful conversation than before, Prompto hangs up the phone. His shoulders droop with his sigh.

Noctis gives him a sympathetic look, places his knitting materials on the coffee table, and draws Prompto into a hug. Prompto acquiesces to the silent demand eagerly.

“Everything okay?” Noctis asks after a minute of quiet.

Prompto laughs, wetly, against Noctis’ collarbone. “I really hate my father.”

(Yeah.

So does Noctis, and he hasn’t even met the man.)

* * *

Prompto’s at some photography event for one of his courses when there’s a knock on the front door. Noctis quirks an eyebrow and wipes his hands with a dishrag, distractedly calling, “Coming,” to the door while he turns off the heat and takes his cauldron off the stove. He sniffs, grimacing, at the smell of Ignis’ regular bloodlust potion.

He opens the door once nothing is in immediate danger of setting aflame if he looks away for half a second, and sighs at his newest guest.

His estranged, weird-as-hell (and that’s saying something, considering all the people Noctis regularly orbits around), uncle only smiles.

“Hello, my dear,” greets one Ardyn Lucis Caelum. “I’ve heard from the grapevine that you’re in need of my assistance.”

**Author's Note:**

> Drop a comment/kudos if you enjoyed it! I’m probably just gonna do one-shots for this series instead of a chapterfic or long one-shot, but honestly, it’s up in the air at this point.


End file.
